Homer Jacobson

Now that I am now officially a nonagenarian I find all kinds of stuff showing up in various media that gives a jolt to my memory bank. The NY Times on October 25, 2007 ran an article about how the creationism crowd were trying to hijack one of my favorite college professor’s, Dr.Homer Jacobson. I was in my forties attending Brooklyn College at night. It was in a physics course that I had the great fortune of meeting up with Dr. Jacobson.

He was a short, very energetic man who literally was having a love affair with his subject matter. The same quality overflowed to the class of almost all adult students. After our first exam he asked if I would stay after class. He held a copy of my test paper in his hand. He looked at it and then at me and said, “checked your admission records and found you never went to high school.” He seemed confused and I hastily explained that I had taken all the college entrance exams and had done fairly well. “Yes,” he said, “I am not suggesting you shouldn’t be here, but your lack of high school algebra is doing you in. You seem to know exactly which formula to apply to a given problem. Your trouble is with the arithmetic. You add where you should divide and multiply when you should subtract and so on.” I was obviously troubled by all this as I was terribly insecure about being in college in the first place.

To Dr. Jacobson’s everlasting credit he quickly recognized my insecurity and spent the next five minutes assuring me that indeed I can do the work and need not be overly concerned. He said, “Here is what I am going to do. You will take the exams with everyone else, but you will just plug in the formula that you think applies to the solution and leave it at that. The really important thing is to know what formula goes with the problem. The arithmetic you can get out of any text book.” And that’s what I did for the rest of a very satisfactory semester.

On another occasion Dr. Jacobson asked if someone would review Boyles Law on the inverse relationship between pressure and volume of gases. This had been discussed in a previous session. Without thinking about it I raised my hand and he said, “Okay Mr Schrank tell us about it.” And off I went into what I thought was a beautiful exposition of Boyles Law. I finished thinking I had done a great job when Homer Jacobson said, “That was very well presented with your usual certainty, but I must tell you, you were absolutely wrong.” Well the whole class roared with laughter and so did I. I learned that certainty might be required characteristic of leadership, but has nothing whatsoever to do with being right.

My next encounter with Homer Jacobson had a life long effect on the many many times I was dealing with programs designed to help disadvantaged kids, whether at Mobilization For Youth, the Job Corps, New York City Youth Training and Employment or the Ford Foundation. We are now back at Brooklyn College and to the best of my recollection Dr. Jacobson was teaching a class on the history of science. I remember so clearly how he was able to dramatize all the great scientific breakthroughs which he said were “built on the shoulders of the giants who went before.” It was in a discussion of the race between Leibniz and Newton for the invention of calculus that he decided to demonstrate how calculus was used. The classroom had blackboards on three sides. He began on the front blackboard to write formulas and explain their significance. He had gotten somewhere on the side near the back when he turned to the class and asked, “Does anyone in this room know what the teacher is doing?” There was silence, but an overwhelming number of heads shaking very quietly indicated a very loud NO. He thought for a moment and said, “Why don’t the students go to the cafeteria have a nice cup of coffee and a Danish while the professor figures out how to teach this course.”

I have never forgotten that lesson. It was what one of my Public School teachers called an “electric light moment.” I had so often heard from teachers from kindergarten through college about “dumb kids who just weren’t ready to learn.” After Dr. Jacobson’s example, I could never accept that excuse. There were no dumb kids. There were only teachers who hadn’t yet figured out how to teach the people sitting in front of them in their respective classrooms.

Can you see why I have never forgotten this great teacher? Homer Jacobson’s example has stayed with me all these years. I thank him from the bottom of my heart.

And of course thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.

PS. Have you had teachers in your life who were memorable or had a real influence on you? In what way? Please tell us about it by clicking on the "Comments" link below.

Upon Becoming 90

Look, this has been my 90th birthday week and I am reeling from the outpouring of love and affection from dear dear friends from Washington, Florida, Brooklyn, Metropolitan Opera and others. So here is a poem I recently wrote on a napkin in a restaurant at the Shinnecock Canal. This is a Long Island South Shore commercial fisherman's wharf. The boats are all rocking on the slightest wave action. As I gaze out at the scene this is what I wrote.


THE GULLS

Kenny Mock

The dock builder

Pounded old phone poles

Into the sandy bay bottom.

He thinks he built docks

For the fishing fleet to nest.

Little does he know

He has created places

For seagulls to sit and wait.

Something the gulls know

To wait patiently

For the Mary Anne or Primedancer

Their dinner bring.

I worry are they

Stranded on their poles

As the Easter Island lookouts?

They wait and wait and wait

When the last of us has departed

What happens then?


About 50 years ago in another time of change there was another period of poetry writing.


SUMMERTIME HEAT

I walked on winters path

Now in summertime heat

Has it been so long?

For the tall grass

I could not see

The sun go home.

It's Time to Use the "L" Word

We have another guest on our blog, Basil J Whiting. Basil is a major consultant to foundations. For over 40 years Basil has been working on social problems, with his primary concern being workplace issues. He brings us an interesting perspective on the "L" word. As you probably know, the Republicans have demonized it. You will get a kick out of Basil's unique use of the letter "L".

 
IT'S TIME TO USE THE 'L' WORD

With health care on the national agenda for the foreseeable future, the Republican responses thus far to the S-CHIP expansion and the proposals of Democratic Presidential hopefulls clearly indicate that it is time to use the "L" word.
 
When the President says he opposes S-CHIP expansion in part because it is a step toward "government controlled" medicine, he is LYING.  When Republican candidates say Democratic health insurance proposals are "socialized medicine," they are LYING. 
 
"Government funded" health care is not "government controlled" health care.  S-CHIP and most health care proposals are for full, or some degree of, government funding, not government control.  My wife and I have been on Medicare for the last five years and we use any doctor or facility we want.  And, Medicare's administrative costs are 3%, not the 20% of private insurers.
 
It's going to be a long, hard fight for national health insurance, and there are enough real issues to resolve without these old canards, too.  But we know they have power and that the Republicans and their allies will trot them out.  So, it's time to stop using weasel words about what they're doing and start calling LIES, LIES.
 
Basil J. Whiting

Burning Man

Imagine, 47,000 people inhabiting a dried up lake bed in the middle of the Nevada desert. No power, water, or amenities. The occupants bring everything in; a large city is built in one week. This is the phenomenon know as ‘Burning Man’. The rules are simple: you’re not allowed to advertise or sell anything, free expression is encouraged to make the overall experience exciting, and most importantly, you must leave no trace.

Burning Man started in San Francisco in the mid eighties. An artist by the name of Larry Harvey had just broken up with a girlfriend and he was in need of some sort of release. He built a sculpture of a man and went down to Baker Beach and torched it. Realizing the cathartic effect of this ritual, it became an annual event attracting more people every year. In the late eighties, the event grew too big for the city and they moved it out to the current site of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.

Two hours north of Reno and just north of the speck-on-the-map town of Gerlach lies the Black Rock Desert. Surrounded by mountains, the vast dried up lakebed is flat, creating a perfect horizontal canvas. Completely devoid of animals & vegetation, the line of sight is about three miles on a clear day. The weather is extreme, hot days, cold nights, and major wind and dust storms that can create instant whiteout conditions with little to no visibility. The lakebed contains a fine, powdery dust that seems to cling to everything.

The Burning Man site is referred to as ‘Black Rock City’, complete with a post office, radio station and medical staff. The city is laid out in a huge semicircle, with the large open area in the middle called the ‘Playa’. The Esplanade surrounds the Playa and twelve more parallel streets radiate outward. It’s in these concentric streets where the 47,000 ‘Burners’ live for the week. The open ‘Playa’ area is where the large art exhibits stand as well as the ‘Man’, which is directly in the middle of the semicircle. No cars are allowed on the Playa unless they’re decorated ‘Art Cars’. Bicycles are the preferred form of transportation, and many are decorated, resembling animals and breathing fire.

Each year, Burning Man has a different theme, which loosely dictates the focus of the art and theme camps. This year, the theme was ‘The Green Man’, which asked the question, ‘What is man’s connection to nature’. I can’t say all of the art focused on the theme, but it was a topic of discussion. The very nature of Burning Man isn’t very ‘Green’. 47,000 people driving in from all over the country in trucks, RV’s, and bringing in everything from huge diesel generators to trampolines. I think the ‘Green Man’ was an interesting concept, but I can’t say I noticed a decrease in consumption or burning of fossil fuels at the event in comparison to last year. In fact, this year saw the largest fireball in Burning Man history when the ‘Crude Awakening’ oil derrick was blown up right after the man was burned on Saturday night.

Due to the extreme heat during the day, most activities occur at night. Days are spent either sleeping or relaxing in the shade, and at the night, the entire place comes alive. Some of the events include fire twirling, trapeze performances, and all night dance parties. A typical night consists of illuminating ones body and bicycle with L-Wire blinky lights and heading out on the Playa with a loose plan. The options range from huge dance parties with massive sound systems, to a silent play resembling a previous time in history. Various art cars rove the flat desert floor creating mobile parties and the large art installations stand like landmarks in the temporary city. The colors and sounds cannot truly be described. Imagine thousands of people out and about with colorful blinking lights and the sound of fire being shot into in the sky. Throw in the elaborately decorated art cars and theme camps on the Esplanade and you have one heck of a party.

What I enjoyed the most about Burning Man is the fact that thousands of people leave their normal lives for a week and gather to express themselves. It’s an open environment where you can truly be yourself, free of social barriers. Everyone is self sufficient, so it’s a gifting culture where you’re encouraged to share with the other participants. In this day and age, it’s so refreshing to be in an environment that’s free of advertising of any sort. Nothing is for sale, so people just give everything away. I’m amazed that this sort of event can even exist in this age of fear and paranoia.

Burning Man is pretty difficult to describe. If you’re curious, you should just check it out. The elements can be very harsh, but the rewards far outweigh the challenges. It took me a couple weeks to recover due mostly to lack of sleep. I’m thinking I may take next year off, but when the time draws near to go back out to the Playa, I’ll probably start packing up all the dusty camping gear and get ready to ‘Burn’.